


And I Know You

by dramady, edonyx



Category: Adam Lambert - Fandom, American Idol RPF, lambliff
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-14
Updated: 2010-03-14
Packaged: 2017-10-08 00:11:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/70697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dramady/pseuds/dramady, https://archiveofourown.org/users/edonyx/pseuds/edonyx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>Summary:</b> Under the endless sky in the desert, the stars might tell you that you're in love.</p><p><b>Authors' Notes:</b> Prompted by Adam's tweet about 1969. Features Monte, LP and some playing with facts for fictional purposes.</p><p><b>Disclaimer:</b> This is a non-profit, non-commercial work of fiction using the names and likenesses of real individuals. This fictional story is not intended to imply that the events herein actually occurred, or that the attitudes or behaviors described are engaged in or condoned by the real persons whose names are used without permission.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And I Know You

"...no, man, they're doing acid tests in the desert! They're gonna have bands there and everything. You bring your tent and your food and it's like, one big party. Bunch of the Haight/Ashbury bands are gonna be there, too, giant jam sesh. Plenty of good dope, good hits and good times." Monte rests his arm across Adam's shoulders, dark sunglasses hiding the heaviness of his own eyes. "You should come."

"I don't know ... " Adam just got off work at the clothing store where he works part time and he's not sure he feels like making the two hour trip to the desert to get in on questionable acid and bands that are trying to be Hendrix and failing. "It could be _really_ depressing." And he's depressed enough as it is with the latest break-up under his belt. It seems Adam has _really bad_ taste in boys.

"Free love," Monte reminds, jarring Adam with a hug. "Ohm's gonna be there, Jefferson Airplane, The Youngbloods, Lamb... I'm telling you, it's gonna be good. I'm bringing my guitar so if the music's weak, then we can totally bust a jam." Monte might believe in Free Love, but he doesn't act on it; he's got his own girl and flower baby. He's going for the _music_, man.

"Do I even have a choice?" Of course, Citizen Vein would give any of those bands some competition. "Okay, okay. When are we leaving? I need to pack." Does Adam still have his pancho? Or did that get lost in the breakup. It's a _great_ pancho with long fringe.

"Nope. No choice. We're leaving tonight." Monte's got a canvas tent and plenty of blankets, and he knows that the other people that are going will be 'kind'. There'll be food to share, drugs to share, music to talk about and play. Stars to sing to and campfires to light the way to new friendships. "Lisa and my beautiful Marigold are coming, so you'll have plenty to do, man. I'll swing by in the bus at eight."

"I'll be ready to go." Adam will pack his maracas and his suede lace up boots. Maybe it will be better to go somewhere else. Maybe he'll meet someone else, nothing serious, right? But a fuck under the stars? That would be _fantastic_.

Monte's good to his word, honking from his VW Minibus full of Love and Flower Children, instruments and shelter. Lisa will look after Marigold, even as she's big and round with what Monte's sure are twins, letting Monte do what he does best: play music with Adam.

~~

The trip isn't bad actually. Adam plays with Monte's little girl until she falls asleep, then he just leans his head against the window and watches the world go by, singing along with the radio. Fuck, but Janis Joplin has more balls that he does, Adam thinks; her voice is like aural honesty. And that's not even after a hit. That's what he thinks when he's sober.

And when they get to the right place, there are a fleet of other VW vans and Bugs and motorcycles and Adam gives Monte a one-armed hug - it was a good idea to come, he can tell already. It feels right here. Feels free and good.

The minute that Monte slides open the side door on the VW, he's greeted by someone who's small, slight, dressed in black except for the peek of tie-dye t-shirt underneath the neck of his sweater. "_Monte!_ Glad you made it. The sky's clear tonight... wander out into the desert a little and it's like you can see God." Monte's friend greets Lisa and she and Monte's daughter, who's looking freshly awake and a little bit shy, but he stops when he sees Adam. "Hi," he says, carefully. "I'm Tommy Joe Ratliff."

"You are. I'm Adam Lambert." And Adam offers his hand and oh, yes. Monte deserves amazing Karma for dragging Adam out here because Tommy is _cute_ with eyes that seem deeper than any he's seen in a long time. "Will you show me God?"

Tommy takes Adam's hand and kisses his knuckles like he's a gentleman and Adam's Grace Slick herself, and then extends an arm beyond the campfires and the music that's coming from a makeshift stage. "My new friend, I will show you the nine hundred names of God. I'm gonna go grab my guitar and we can take a walk and you can sing to me. That's what you are, right? You're a singer." Tommy's eyes are dark as he looks at Monte's beautiful friend, all pale eyes and dark, shaggy hair. This is why he's here. Free love. Freedom in love. It doesn't have to be a woman, it can be whatever they want.

"I sing, mmhmm." Reaching out, Adam touches Tommy's cheek. Is he real? He's gorgeous and ephemeral and exuding only good vibes; he makes Adam feel easy inside. "I'll sing with you." He thinks only belatedly of Monte, turning back to give his friend a bright smile. "God is waiting." And with that, he follows Tommy Joe Ratliff into the desert.

It's the dawning of a New Moon, so the sky is as black as velvet, stars blazing like holes pricked through to let in some greater light behind. Tommy walks with Adam, talking to him about music and poetry, about the beginning of time and how music was created, until the glow of all of the campfires behind them is gone, and the great bar of the Milky Way is there in front of them. "We'll stop here. Monte told me you sang. I'd like to play with you."

"I sing," Adam says again. A rough-hewn Mexican blanket is spread out over the sand and he sits down, legs crossed, feeling the residual heat from the day still in the ground under him. "If you play, I'll sing. You're beautiful." It's almost like the star-shine is in Tommy's hair; Adam touches it when Tommy sits too.

Tommy's closer to beatnik than hippie, keeping his hair short and closer in style to Andy Warhol than Jerry Garcia, white-blonde and tucked behind his ear. He smiles, tipping his head into Adam's touch, fingers picking out a melody on the guitar, waiting for Adam to catch the words from wherever they might come from. They'll spend the night out here, he already knows, can see it in the way the pale white light from the stars marks Adam's face. The touch, the look, the compliment. The sound of Adam's voice. Soon Tommy will set his guitar down and play Adam, himself.

There are words that come, mostly nonsensical, about the sun in eyes that are brown like the hills in the distance, about skin the color of vanilla cream, about a mouth shaped like something carved by a Greek god. (Adam isn't a songwriter.) But when the moon is directly overhead, Adam leans up onto his knees and he kisses Tommy Joe Ratliff and that, he thinks, is what songs should be written about.

The guitar is set aside as long fingers climb into Adam's hair; hair that smells vaguely of sandalwood and teak, and his mouth parts against the press of Adam's. It's easy to pull him over, to lie back on that blanket, to use Adam's body for warmth as much as anything else. Nobody will miss them out here; Monte knows both Tommy and Adam, and knows which direction they walked in. Tommy licks into Adam's mouth, his voice reduced to nothing more than a breathy sigh.

It's getting cold; they'll need to pull out the other blanket soon. But not yet. Adam pushes off Tommy's sweater and then his shirt and in the moonlight, Tommy's skin is ethereally white. Hands first wander of the narrow chest and waist, then Adam kisses the skin, tasting it, finding places to touch that make Tommy shiver.

The funny part about all of this is, Tommy isn't high. He's not tripping. Hell _yes_, he's got weed with him, and a couple of hits of acid, but they didn't have a chance to dose before this happened. Adam's shirt is pulled up in handfuls between his shoulderblades, fingers tightening with each gasp and shiver that Adam ekes from him. Tommy tugs at Adam, trying to raise him up so Tommy can kiss him again, so he can whisper his want on the bow of Adam's lips.

Somewhere between getting naked and anything else, the two tabs of acid are produced and ingested and to Adam, it's like the night sky and each of the stars are individual rainbows. And Tommy's _body_ is like caramel, warm and sweet and stretched out. Each taste Adam has is a new sensation and when he straddles Tommy's head and holds Tommy's cock, it's the most _amazing experience_. And Tommy's precome tastes like the beach, Adam thinks.

Adam's body moves, it _flows_, and they move together, Tommy's mouth around Adam's cock, one hand on the side of his thigh and the other touching, teasing, and he listens to the way skin moves over skin. It's soft, it hums, like a bad ground on an amplifier, but there's nothing bad about this at all. It's _transcendent_ and beautiful, like Adam's body is an instrument that Tommy's playing. He arches his neck to take Adam into his mouth further, hand stroking to encourage him down.

Any sounds they make seem to be swallowed up by the desert and the music they can still hear in the distance. Even when Adam comes, it feels like the beginning of something and not the end; he sucks down Tommy's come, too, then stretches out next to him, hands still running over the xylophone of Tommy's ribs, the hollow of his stomach, tasting the jut of his collarbone. "I think I love you," he whispers and it seems just the right thing to say in a night that feels eternal and beautiful.

Even though Tommy's eyes are closed, he can see the trails that Adam's touch leaves on his skin, smears of colour that melt away as new ones are drawn. "Love is the answer," he whispers back, and turns so he and Adam are facing each other again. Then Tommy can take his time touching, circling around the pebbles of Adam's nipples and down the center of his chest to skim a whirlpool around his navel. "You're beautiful," he murmurs, stretching his neck to kiss at Adam's vibrantly beating pulse.

"We both are." Together, two spirits, two souls finding each other in the desert. This is what Adam thinks when he falls back to his back and feels Tommy on top of him. Adam's _blood_ is thrumming in time with primordial forces, he thinks, and when he nips at Tommy's wrist, he _swears_ that their pulses are beating at the same rate. _Fate and Karma_, he thinks, and other lovers are forgotten in the heat of Tommy's body and the chill of the air around them.

It feels like it takes hours, but finally, Tommy can rock up and down on Adam, fingers laced into his new lover's to hold himself steady, back arched and chin raised, feeling nothing of the cool desert air around them. _This_ is freedom in love, freedom in sexuality, and there's no reason to stifle any of the sounds that he makes, groans and gasps until Tommy falls forward to lick hot kisses into Adam's mouth, an oasis in all this dryness.

The desert is beautiful, the sky, the air, the sounds, _Tommy Joe_ and his body are all beautiful. Adam digs his heels into the sand under the blanket to push _up_ into that welcoming-hot-clench. When he comes, he thinks, he will burst apart into stars that fly up to the sky and stay there forever, watching over everyone. He wraps a hand around Tommy's cock, stroking it; it feels like velvet.

Tommy's head rolls back on his shoulders, body tightening up around Adam; he can still feel the colours and see the flavour of Adam's skin, how his stroke tastes like salt and his mouth feels blushed and soft. "Beautiful," Tommy whispers again, his voice grown tight and faint. "You'll make me come." It aches in him, drawn out and slow, like the passion that's caught between them is making them both melt in an ounce of pleasure at a time.

"Then you'll be stars," Adam informs him, just as vaguely, eyes slitted with pleasure. "We'll be stars forever." In a flash of a moment, he thinks he'll cry with the perfection of it all. Perhaps his life has come to this moment, to this time, to _this_. Making love in the desert with Tommy Joe, who's beautiful. Adam tightens his grip, feeling his own orgasm like a coat of tingling around him.

Forever. Forever is a _long_ time, and when Tommy comes, it feels like it goes on forever, shudders of pleasure that bow and bend him to Adam, kissing breathily over his lips, dragging his mouth, his teeth, along the line of Adam's jaw, and his thighs tighten on Adam's hips. Love is beautiful, love is forever. Love is _this._ It's Adam.

~~

When the sun comes up on the horizon, Adam is wrapped around Tommy under the blanket, their clothes spread around them and they don't stir for another two hours.

But when they do wander back into the festival, it's as if Tommy is part of Adam's clothes, tight to his body, his guitar over his back, Adam's arm around his shoulder. When he smiles at Monte, Adam's eyes are still dilated, his face flushed with a sunburn. "Can Tommy Joe play with us? We're in love."

"Adam, my man. You should ask Tommy yourself. He doesn't need my permission to jam with us." Lisa comes over and fusses over Adam's sunburn, Marigold close at her hip.

"Come on, we're going to do breakfast with Parsons and Joanie, Adam-honey. Bring your friend. It's good to see you for longer than five minutes, Tommy!" She kisses both of his cheeks and tucks a flower behind his ear. "Welcome to our family."

Tommy only smiles, a slight tipping up of the corners of his mouth, and tucks himself close to Adam. The morning is full of orange and yellow, dun-beige and canvas-green and ripe with music already. "I'd love some water," he mentions, and nods, slowly. "I'm still tripping." He turns his smile to Lisa. "We're in love. That's what he said. Because the stars said so."

"The _stars_ said so," Adam agrees. "The acid he got was _amazing_. It makes the sky open up and speak to us. And that's what it told us." Then he turns to his lover. "So you'll play with us? And never leave? We can trip some more and then make love again."

"I'll leave if the path leads me away," Tommy answers, closing his eyes and turning his face up to the sun. He's as burned as Adam, but at this point doesn't feel much of it, comfortable against Adam's body with his guitar at his back. "But I'll play with you and Monte and Monte's family. That'd be _cherry._ I'd be highly flattered, man."

"Let's get some food and water into you," says Lisa, gesturing to the minibus. "I've got tea made, and from the looks of you both, you slept in the desert. You might want to catch a cat in the real bed up there." She points to where the roof of the VW has been raised, giving its passengers room to sleep. "I'll roll you up a bomber for three of you to smoke when you're ready."

Lisa is like Adam's earth mother and he smiles nearly beatifically at her and her ministrations. They drink water but don't sleep and two hours later, Monte and Tommy and their friend Longineu are playing as Longineu's girlfriend dances around them. Marigold dances too and Adam sings and the sun shines down on them in a way that makes it so that Adam can't not smile, standing, his hands fluttering in the air as the makeshift band moves fluidly from one tune to the next, the songs blending from one to the other, to another.

The heat is everywhere, and Tommy can see the way it ripples up from the land in golden waves, kissing Adam like the tide on a beach. His voice cuts through the air, sharp as a knife, and while the stars had told them both that they're in love, _the_ star overhead, the Sun, tells Tommy that the night sky was right. As his trip starts to wear thin, he realizes how _hot_ the sun is, and sets his guitar down to wander off and find something to drink, and some kind of shelter to hide under. The fact that Adam's invited goes unspoken, only shared in a look.

Longineu's still playing the bongos and Monte's bent over his guitar playing. Adam rests a hand on his shoulder and nods and Monte smiles. Then, Adam can follow Tommy. Even over his pancho, the sun is very warm; he can feel it on his scalp and the shade, then, of a canvas tent, feels _blissful_. There are blankets spread around and Adam lies down on one, closing his eyes for a moment, until he feels someone next to him.

Adam smiles first, then opens his eyes. In the murk of the shade, Tommy still looks beautiful. "Lie with me," Adam says, reaching a hand up.

"Did you know this one was mine?" Tommy asks, offering the canteen of water to Adam. "Did you follow me?" He doesn't let Adam answer though, lying out beside him to kiss Adam, siding a hand beneath the pancho he's wearing. The press of Tommy's tongue into Adam's mouth shares the hit of acid that Tommy's taken to freshen his trip, and the kisses feel like Tommy's sliding, like he's melting. That he and Adam are _meant_ to do this. Whatever 'this' might be, at this moment.

Within a few minutes, Adam can feel time stretching out for them again, like a ribbon, like they're falling down the rabbit hole and there's no reason to stop falling. Water tastes like wine and Tommy's skin tastes like the sun. In another corner of the tent, a guy and chick are getting it on; she's straddling his lap and he's sucking on her boobs and for a second, Adam can't tell if the sounds she makes are coming from her or from him when Tommy wraps a hand around his cock.

Tommy doesn't even glance up at the other couple. He knows who it is and knows that they're here for the same reasons that he and Adam are: to find each other in the deepest, most primal connection. He licks the skin below Adam's ear as he strokes his cock in long, slow pulls, feeling that same subaudible hum, like a bad ground, in his blood and in his ears. "Beautiful," he whispers hotly into Adam's hair, pressing his own hips against Adam's body. "It's like you're not even real."

"I'm real, though," Adam tells him, though at the moment, he can't be sure, with everything feeling like taffy, stretched and pulled and sweet. Tommy feels real when Adam rolls over him and slides down his body, licking and sucking on Tommy's cock for an age before urging his legs up and licking lower. It's like they're two halves of a whole, yin and yang and they have clicked in that primary way that leaves Adam feeling like a smile.

The only thing Tommy still has on is the t-shirt, a tornado of crimson, white and indigo, and one hand lies in Adam's hair, the other thrown up above his head as he breathes in long gasps that feel ochred and hot. The girl and guy in the other corner are completely forgotten, lost against the wet friction of Adam's mouth on his body. Each shiver that Adam gets out of Tommy feels like the shedding of skin, losing the parts of himself that are unimportant, letting him simply _feel_ what Adam's doing, below. His cock jerks, as hot and wet as Adam's mouth itself, and Tommy's fingers trail out of Adam's hair to palm up himself.

Spit-slick fingers work Tommy open and it feels like Adam could stretch them both enough to encompass the world. This would bring peace he thinks, blearily. Their love would bring the _world_ together. More, and he feels a heat not like the sun, but something _better_ as he slides in, bending to kiss Tommy again. Maybe he's laughing, he's not even sure; it's just joy. All of it. Joy.

It's easy to hook his legs around Adam's waist, narrow-hipped and smooth-skinned, and Tommy takes those kisses like he needs them as air, breathing in Adam's breath and giving it back as their bodies rock together with a slow, easy rhythm that feels _so good_. It's not _hip_ or _groovy_, but something that transcends all of that, and he arches up from the blanket that's beneath him to pull Adam closer, deeper. His fingertips dig into Adam's back, holding onto the wings of his shoulderblades like that's all that will keep him grounded from the way he _feels._

Not bothered at the moment with the sunburn that is turning their skin crimson-red, or the dehydration from the desert, all Adam cares about is the feeling of Tommy Joe's _body_ and how it fits under and around Adam's in a way that cannot be explained by mere words.

They sleep after, until the hard sun sets and the moon returns and the cool is as sharp a contrast as anything. Shivering, Adam cradles Tommy's body to his and whispers into his ear words like 'love' and 'fate' and how Tommy's skin is Truth.

~~

The minibus is packed up, however, when the festival has ended. Stragglers are leaving in all directions and Monte and Lisa are waiting as Adam holds Tommy's hands and looks at him.

Forever doesn't seem to be what it was two nights ago, and he is sad, but not devastated. After all, how does one argue with the fates? He kisses Tommy's palm though and gives him a small smile.

Tommy looks at Adam with eyes that are dark and sober for the first time since the beginning of the festival, and it's his turn to kiss the middle of Adam's palm, and to seal it properly, puts his own hand against it, still feeling where Adam's lips had kissed him. There's nothing to say, nothing he _can_ say, that would make any difference. Now they have to go back to their lives, maybe to meet again, or maybe not. Tommy gets up on his toes, wrapped up again in a sweater and a hat to hide him from the sun, sunglasses tucked into the neck of his shirt, and kisses the soft bow of Adam's mouth.

He still fits _perfectly_ against the curve of Adam's body and Adam wants to beg Tommy to come back with them. But that's not _right_. "I love you," he whispers into Tommy's mouth and then he watches Tommy walk away before he climbs into the minibus next to Marigold and Monte starts to drive away. By craning his neck, Adam can watch Tommy get smaller and smaller.

_"The path isn't leading me that way, though,"_ Tommy had said, and Adam had nodded as if he understood. In the minibus, he wipes the back of his hand under his eyes and tells Marigold when she asks that he's not sad, not really. That the world is a crazy place sometimes. Then he sleeps the rest of the way back from the desert to the city and he sleeps some more in his room.

~~

Back at work the next day, Adam picks at the peeling skin of his sunburn and nods listlessly at people who ask if the things they hold in front of them make them look _hip_. They're Establishment, trying to be anti, but he doesn't have the heart to tell them no. He scrawls out words on scraps of paper, words like _sunrose_ and _moonspeak_ and he swears he can taste Tommy Joe's skin when he closes his eyes.

Burbank is four hours away from San Francisco, but only twelve miles from downtown Los Angeles. Neither Tommy or Adam had talked about where they'd come from, only knowing where they're going and forgetting where they'd been. He has no idea that the man whom the stars had told him to love, even briefly, would be so close.

Monte comes into the store, dark sunglasses hiding his eyes, as usual. "My _man._ Did you not have an amazing time? I told you that you'd have an excellent time. Great dope, great company, great music. Marigold wanted me to give you a kiss, but I think that's better left undone, my friend. You left a bag in my bus, man. Just your boots and maracas. And this." Monte looks mighty pleased with himself when he lays a folded piece of paper on the counter. "I'm gonna go pick up, so I'll get some extra for you. Come over tonight for dinner, Lisa's making cabbage rolls."

"Thanks, Monte." Adam peers into the bag; he loves those boots! He's glad they weren't lost. He holds the note in his hand like a prize until his friend leaves. Cabbage rolls and pharmaceuticals; Monte's a good friend. When the store is quiet, though, he unfolds the piece of paper.

_I don't know how we chose before,  
for love or sorrow, peace or war  
but where our paths unite the two  
you always know me  
yes you do - and know that I know you_

Hand in hand we leave the fire  
the storytelling done;  
pinch the candle and retire  
tonight our dreams are one

Counting stars by candlelight  
all are dim but one is bright:  
the spiral light of Venus  
rising first and shining best  
from the northwest corner  
of a brand new crescent moon  
while crickets and cicadas sing  
a rare and different tune

You look to me like starshine  
on the foothills of the moon  
Crickets make the rhythm  
and cicadas play the tune  
under a streaming sky  
disguised as love alone  
an ancient hunger wanders  
like an ever-rolling stone

As long as it shines  
by day or by night  
as it does_ shine--  
long as the light shines  
in just enough dark  
to be bright in  
I know you  
and you  
know me, too_  
Adam closes his eyes and lets his head fall back. He'll show this to Monte; it will be a song. An ode, a _love_ song. Easily, Adam can see Tommy Joe's smile, hear the tenor of his laugh. At least he had that love. At least he experienced it. Life's a trip; one has to enjoy the journey.

When he gets to Monte's house and lets Marigold kiss his cheek, he says, with surety, "This is our song, friend. This is what Citizen Vein has been waiting for."

Lisa smiles, listening to her husband and his friend talk music, wearing a pair of Monte's jeans with the fly undone to accomodate her belly. Citizen Vein is what they've been working on for _so long._ To be as recognized as Creedence or Hendrix, the Grateful Dead or Janis and Her Band.

"Isn't the song yours, man?" Monte's house is full of records, of instruments leaning against walls and furniture, plants that are both legal and illegal, the walls painted a warm sunshine yellow with sheer curtains that let in as much light as possible. "It's not mine. Let me see it?" He reads the words and picks up his guitar, strumming absently as the words make him feel the chords.

Adam hands it over as he sits crosslegged on the floor. "It's Tommy Joe's, I know it is. He left it for me. It's his way of saying he loves me, I'm sure. It's _perfect_, don't you think?" And when Monte starts to play, he starts to sing it too and it's gentle; they need Longineu's bongos for it.

Lisa listens from the doorway, stroking the twins with her hand, smiling. The song is beautiful, a sweet combination of Adam's voice and Monte's skill, and even as they're fine-tuning it, she brings in a plate of rolls for the two of them to work on. By midnight, the bong has been packed and smoked on four times, Marigold's tucked into bed, and Lisa's in the back room reading Tom Wolfe's novel about the acid tests where the smell of marijuana won't bother her.

"So you still think the stars told you to love him?" Monte questions, turning the page around to read the words again. He and TJ have played together on a few occasions, mostly at gatherings, and Monte knows he's a pretty decent guy, smart in that way that makes Jim Morrison stand out. In the movement because he _believes_ in it. Like himself and his family. Like Adam.

"Yes." Of that, Adam is sure. He's starfished out on Monte's floor, staring at the ceiling, but seeing the desert sky instead. "I'm sure of it." The connection was too profound, too _real_ to be anything but _love_. Body and soul. "And he wrote that song for me. It might be the one, you know?"

"I know," Monte agrees. "Tommy's a poet who can play anything put in front of him. That's the impression I got. We chilled a few times, played together. If you love him, then your ways'll cross again, man. You gonna crash out here tonight? I can totally make the couch habitable for you. Or, you never know, the stars might just lead you back to him." Monte offers Adam a grin. "Man, I bet I could talk to Billy Graham and see if we can get the Vein to open for Airplane or something at the Fillmore. What do you think of that?"

"That would be ... " With that, Adam sits up, a brilliant grin creasing his face. "Yes." If any of it is meant to happen, it will. If he is meant to see Tommy again, he will. Until then, the memory is more likely to make Adam smile than to feel sad. The pot might have something to do with that.

~~

Summer bleeds into fall, with the threat of 1970 approaching. Monte tells Adam that they've got a gig opening up for the Allman Brothers at the Fillmore West in the middle of October, and they've had plenty of time to get their records pressed and pushed out to the public, with Tommy's song on it going uncredited for lyrics, music by A. Lambert and M. Pittman, and Monte gets Longineu to play drums for them when they practice.

The show rolls around and they're there, ready, Monte talking to Gregg Allman, accepting a gracious, stoned compliment over the song 'And I Know You', that Adam still believes is a love letter from Tommy Joe Ratliff. "Adam!" Monte calls, beckoning him over. "Are you ready to burn the house down?"

He's dressed in feathers and low-cut jeans that barely stay on his hips, greasepaint streaking his face, his black hair brushed back from his shoulders. Adam gifts an equally stoned smile. At the mic, he stands and looks out at the crowd. "You all look _beautiful_," he tells them, then turns his back, letting Monte and Longineu play before he starts to sing.

Bill Graham has the lights tuned to the mix of the band, moving in swirls and eddies over the crowd, who dance and _dance_ to the sounds of the Citizen Vein, acrid, skunky smoke rising in the air like a cloud over the people, over the band, over the music. There are a few who don't dance and simply are part of the experience, part of the music, and one of them is a small, slim black-dressed figure with white-blonde hair and sunglasses. He knows the words by heart, both the ones that weren't written by him and the one piece that was his to give to Adam. It seems that the way has brought him back to a star-crossed love.

"You look to me like starshine  
on the foothills of the moon  
Crickets make the rhythm  
and cicadas play the tune  
under a streaming sky  
disguised as love alone  
an ancient hunger wanders  
like an ever-rolling stone," Adam sings, hands in the air as if imploring the sky - for him, it's always the desert sky - to give him back his lover. The song brings back all the feelings of love and of loss and those there that night talk later about how Adam Lambert seemed to _embody_ the song and _live_ the words so much that when the last notes fade away, he _still_ looks grief-stricken.

Twelve hundred people come to life to give Adam back the love he shared with them, and that ends Citizen Vein's set. The Allman Brothers come out to take the stage, leaving Adam and Monte's band to enjoy the rest of the evening to themselves. Billy himself meets the band, shakes their hands, offers them apples. There's someone _behind_ Billy, though, head and hips tilted, sunglasses off, now. He has three words to say to Adam, and no one else. "I know you."

Adam's breath catches in his chest and he whispers, "long as the light shines, in just enough dark, to be bright in, I know you and you know me, too." He extends a hand, eyes tracing along the lines of Tommy's face. "I love you." As if they've only been apart for a few hours.

Tommy _smiles_ at Adam. "Hand in hand, we leave the fire..." And just as he'd first greeted Adam when they met, Tommy does the same again: taking Adam's hand in his own and kissing his knuckles, one at a time. "Seems I've been brought back to you." He pulls Adam up to him, closing the distance in height to kiss that singing mouth. "Last night I lay on my balcony and looked at the sky, thinking if I should come to the show tonight. I didn't know it'd be you that I was going to see. I just knew I had to come."

"And you're _here_." Arms tight around Tommy's waist, Adam can't stop smiling. His fingers lacing with Tommy's, he smiles at Monte and Longineu as he pulls Tommy out of the hall and to the parking lot where they can see the sky. There are clouds tonight, skittering in front of and around the stars. But Tommy still fits against Adam's sweat-slick body as they both look up. "Will you stay?"

The answer is simple: "Yes." Adam's warmth reminds Tommy of the sun, of lying in the desert where the heat had been so dry that it had reflected from their skin in the way they'd sweat; exertion and passion and high, glorious summer. "You made something beautiful out of what I wrote for you." Beneath the sky, underneath the stars, Tommy kisses Adam again, uncaring of who would see and who would pass judgement between these hipsters, this beat generation, these hippies and their free love. Tommy's love is free to give away, but he's given it to one person, now, and that's Adam. "I think we should crash at your pad. I want to explore every inch of you in technocolour." He's got acid again, and about four grams of pot, but there's no need to drop out, right now. Tommy wants to expand his consciousness in Adam, not on drugs.

Back in Adam's room, they aren't under the stars, but a scarf-covered lamp. There's no sand, only music on his record player as they lie on the mattress. Tommy is on his back, naked and beautiful. Adam tastes the inside of his elbow, the crux of his neck, and his _mouth_, their hips rocking together, the friction reminding him that they are _alive_.

In the desert, it had been sound and colour, senses switching around and not performing the way they're supposed to. Now it's _heady_, the room red and warm, Tommy arching up with every part that Adam kisses. _This_ is sensation, this is golden, with Tommy's cock trapped between their bodies, rubbing hot, heavy friction that makes him gasp and groan, and he wraps his legs around Adam's waist.

"Monte said that since you loved me, you'd come back," Adam gasps. It's almost as if the song drew them together again. Music which made it possible for them to meet, to fall in love, brings them together again. The rhythm they find, however, is their own, unique and it drives them higher and he kisses Tommy, sharing their breath.

For all the instruments that Tommy plays, he's never been able to sing, but Adam makes him make _sound_, breathy, tight sounds that are little more than notes, Adam using _him_ as an instrument. His fingertips dig into Adam's shoulders, into the back of his neck, into the dark slide of his hair, and Adam can feel the way Tommy's body tightens, in sound and in muscle, until Tommy gasps, "I'm cuh- I'm _coming-_"

And in that moment, Adam can feel like he's in the desert again, the heat of Tommy's body like a flashback of the best kind. He thrusts through Tommy's orgasm to find his own, and when they are sweaty and messy, he thinks the bliss is like sunlight on his shoulders again. "You should join the band. We can change the world."

"Yes," Tommy answers again, turning his head to find Adam's mouth. If it means he can stay with Adam when their paths have crossed now more than once, with the same consequences. Falling together, and the whisper of Adam coming in him has him arch up again with a breathy laugh. "Yes." He kisses Adam's hair, strands sticking to his lips and his skin like silky spiderwebs. "Do you want me to come here? Stay? Can I be with you?"

"_Yes_." The smile that blooms on Adam's face is brighter than that summer sun and he holds Tommy tightly as he rolls them right off the bed onto the floor, laughing happily. The sky told them they were in love. All they had to do was believe it.

**Author's Note:**

> _Lyrics are from the poet Robert Hunter's Terrapin Suite, found in the book Box Of Rain_


End file.
